But for variety, I did a bit of spinning. It's a merino/bamboo/silk mix from the Bendigo Sheep and Wool festival this year. Took me a while to fit it into DADA homework for the HP game. I had to make something that could be used as a form of identification (like a security question). Hmmmm...?

Luckily, there was a lot of spin-time to think about it.

And now I've finished my goals for this month, so I'm going to relax a bit and READ. Currently reading "Les Miserables", which is a great book, except for Victor Hugo (as he does) going off on a tangent for dozens of pages...(Just as Jean escapes jail, Hugo decides to give a 40-page account of the Battle of Waterloo. I slogged through it all, so it had better be relevant later!) There's a new movie version coming out in the near future, which I'm going to see, but I'm going to read the book first. It's quite heavy (especially when you tend to read in bed, like I do) (I kept drifting off to sleep and dropping it on my face!) :) so I bought a Kindle just for that book ...I may have uploaded a few more since then. Hehehe.

Having said that, I have some letters to write, some parcels to post, some housework to do, socks to darn... and I want to finish some more knitting... and cast something else on...

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Zach is into Owls at the moment, probably because of the one who helps "host" the cartoons each morning. I'm kind of over OWLs at the moment, because this one took a lot of work (and about 10 skeins of worsted weight Madelinetosh!)

I mad a new Paper Moon hat. My last one was dark grey, and fit so well. I loved this brown color (Glazed Pecan). Think I'll have to obtain some more somehow...

I stuck to the pattern this time, and it came out a bit tight. But other people on Ravelry have talked about how "Vintage" grows when you wash it, so I was counting on it blocking a bit bigger. I washed it and dried it on a balloon. Fits perfectly :)

Also made another scarf :)

This one is worsted weight, but it still seemed to take forever. It's the first time I tried to use two colors in the weft, so there was a little bit of fiddling there. I knew I didn't have enough of the medium brown color (Nutmeg) to do the whole length, so I left it off the middle 70 or 80cm. the whole thing is about 2.5m.

Of course, it's the jumper part that took the longest. This one is the Opulent Raglan, and I got the pattern as a prize from Seakame (on Ravelry). (The prize was a random draw of all the people who completed a class in May, I think.) I did get to choose the pattern :)

Reasonably simple, but lots of knitting. No seams, and all stocking stitch in the round (once you get down to the underarms) except for the cable section, which breaks up the monotony quite nicely.

And that's the Muggle Studies OWL done. Next term (Jan-Mar) I might have to whip up another jumper, I think. Maybe even two...

Thursday, November 17, 2011

hehehe. If you haven't gathered this by now, I'm making ten woven scarves for Christmas presents. The deadline (because it's also part of the Harry Potter game on Ravelry) is the end of November, so if you're feeling a little sick of the weaving, the end is in sight.

But until then...

...a matching scarf for Kylie (the brown and green one from the last post is for my brother, Matt, and this is for his wife Kylie. The stripe pattern is the same.) The red is WM in Sanguinella, and the black is some BWM sock yarn, I think.

Then there's Abby's

She's my niece, so she gets a colorful one, which is half Dazzle (the blue that I used for my "All You Need Is Love" mittens, a present from Kelly in England, which is blue with speckles of green and purple) and half hand-dyed. I remember making a really long skein, 12 meters, and dipping each end slowly into the dyes until the color faded away.

This one is for Tim. The warp is that Bugga sock yarn that made my Elijah look like he was wearing army camo. The weft is Wired For Fibre alpaca 4ply, which is really soft, though it did have some grass in it. It lightened the color a lot, so it doesn't look army green, but would still match all his army-green clothes ;)

Well, Zach is awake, so I'll give him a drink, and then get back to work. I've nearly finished my "Muggle Studies OWL" (lol) so, a post on that in a few days :)

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

I have been buying a little bit of Wollmeise from Ravelry lately. This purple/white/black looked much nicer in the photo than it did in real life. I actually tried to leach out the color with Dyelon, but nothing happened. lol. Anyway, when my sister-in-law saw it (while searching the stash for her own scarf color) she immediately picked this out for Mum.

I'm not sure about it. I told Mum she could overdye it darker if she liked. The warp is actually a pale multicolored bamboo/wool/nylon mix from Wired For Fibre, with pink and blue and green... but from a distance it looks grey, and I thought it would soften the colors, as well as being nice and soft. Hmmm.

Love this one, though. This is another Kylie choice, for her own hubby, my brother Matt. It's a dark brown Wollmeise called Ebenholz, and the green is Dream in Color's Spring Tickle. It's the same color I made Jasmines birthday jumper in last July, and (for some unknown crazy reason) I just love it.

I'm thinking of making socks with this brown and some red/orange Wollmeise called "Orient". I started the toe, but I'm not yet sure of the pattern... think I'll make something up :) I put the two colors together, and all I can think of is apple trees, which makes me feel happy. I don't have time for colorwork socks this month, but... erm... hehehe.